Pakistan is prohibiting the owner of an airline from leaving the country following the crash of one of its planes that killed 127 people.

Interior Minister Rehman Malik said Farooq Bhoja has been barred from leaving Pakistan while aviation officials investigate Friday's crash that killed all on board.

Witnesses say the Boeing 737 crashed during a thunderstorm near the capital's international airport, and that it may have already been on fire before it hit the ground. An airline official has blamed bad weather for the crash, but the cause has not been determined.

Soldiers and emergency workers began the task of searching for bodies among the wreckage at first light Saturday.

Officials say the leased Bhoja Air jet had been in service for three decades.

Bhoja Air official Masham Zafar told the French news agency the Boeing 737 had received Pakistan's Civil Aviation Authority certification and was given clearance by the CAA to land at the Islamabad airport.

Bhoja Air had stopped operating for more than a decade, but relaunched in March with several used Boeings – a practice aviation officials say is not uncommon.

While the airline had been flying between Lahore and Karachi, Friday's doomed flight from Karachi marked the first time the airline had flown to Islamabad.

In July 2010, a passenger plane operated by Airblue airlines crashed in the mountains near Islamabad, killing all 152 people onboard. It was the deadliest plane crash in the country's history.

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